The Labor enquirer., 1887-06-11
What the Greatest Living
American Says About
Labor.
RKERPILLSBURY'S WORDS.
"No Government, Not Even Ours, Has
Ever Yet Dem0netized
the Bullet"


for sale at the ESoUIREk ofiice-l5 cents.
We talk Of tramps, and dread their pres
ence, and power, as well we may. For
tramps may yet become majorities, as
once in France, IL not more than once in
history; and then where will be the mil
lionaire and the monopolist, with all their
boarded but ill-gotten storess And gov
ernment troops, who might have been
tramps themselves had they not been paid
soldiers of the oppres ors, have not always
been willing TO fire on starving women
and children, who only plundered to save
themselves from immediate and terrible
DEATH
Our industrial and producing classes
are not yet the blind and bound beggary
Of France, hundred years ago. Most of
them read. They all reflect. They have
eyes to see, and are beginning to see.
They lately saw congress and the govern
ment doubling their salaries, and robbing
the treasury of their back pay, for two
years, without remorse, while thousands
on thousands Of the working and tax
paying people we're wrestling with debt,
poverty and misery. They see govern
ment officials growing fabulously rich on
small salaries and in short terms of Office.
and they wonder how it is done! They
see how rich government ofiice-holders
appear to delight in mocking their very
miseries by pompously parading before
their hungry, haggard faces their own
princely magnihcence, in their foreign
travels, state banquetings, and the gor-
geous marriage celebrations of their sons
and daughters, all blazoned through the
newspapers of both hemispheres. They
have lost many millions of their hard,
slowly earned, carefully saved deposits in
swindling savings banks and other trust
fund institutions, and they have found
how almost impossible il is to bring such
high-handed villainies to any just punish
ment. All this they see and have seen, and
felt too, like cold, barbed iron, entering
into their soul of souls.
tell you, we may build our palaces and
our magnificent churches for the rich, and
our poor-houses and prisons for those
whose toll makes them rich; but eternal
justice still sways the scepter of the uni
verse, and there comes n day after to-day!
And now, is there no hope for the ma
tion but through violence! Who at this
portentious hour can answer for us this
fearful question! Shall the starving
striker now become our saviour, as did
the slave beforey For il wds the slave
who saved us, or the nationality would
have been lost, in the war of the Rebellion.
! am no prophet, son of no prophet, and
predict the future only from the present
and the past. But bkno~ that appeals 10
gorcrnment are rain wiiic either Of The tuo
present great parties holds The national cap
bai and controls the national legislation'
There was no balm in the republican Gil
cad; there was surely no physician in all
the tents of the old democracy. From
the annexation of Texas in lsi5, and the
consequent Mexican war, the democratic
party was the faithful ally Of slavery, till
that accursed system went down before
the avenging wrath of men and gods. And
just Us the democratic party legislated for
the lords Of the lash and redhot branding
iron. so the republican party sold itself
to land and moneyed rings, monopolists
and millionaires, as our present conditions
everywhere abundantly show.
And so the people must learn to help
themselves. Peaceably, by the ballot, il
possible. And were there only intelligence
among the people, the voice of the people
would be indeed he roice Of God.
Daniel Webster said in the senate cham
ber; The right of revolution always ex-
lists, and there may be such oppression as
fully to warrant it!"And he said this in
the memorable seventh of March speech,
wholly in tbe interest of the slave-hunter
as well us the Shareholder. And the
declaration at the time greatly encouraged
the shareholders in the Rebellion if it